Modern internal combustion engines of motor vehicles are controlled by an electronic motor controller (ECU: Electronic Control Unit), which contains an increasingly complex functional software. In the operation of the internal combustion engine, the functional software of the electronic control unit is normally monitored according to a 3-level concept. In this concept, errors in the execution of monitoring-relevant scopes of the functional software are detected in a so-called “level 1”, whereby calculated torques are monitored. This is done by simulating the torques in the so-called “level 2” and comparing them with each other.
In addition, internal combustion engines are known that are controlled not by a single electronic control device but by several electronic control devices, whereby the individual control devices, for example in a twelve-cylinder engine with two cylinder banks, is responsible for one of the two cylinder banks in each instance. In the case of such a control device system with several electronic control devices the functional monitoring of the individual control devices is customarily carried out separately for the individual control devices, which is, however, relatively complex.